Various devices have been developed in the past that are used in the treatment and care of turf such as grass or other ground covers of lawns, ball fields, golf courses, and the like. It is desirable to aerate the turf so as to enable air, moisture and nutrients to reach the roots of the grass, etc. The aeration of turf generally is performed by forming a pattern of holes in the turf. The holes tend to disturb the soil and roots beneath the surface of the ground cover, and when moisture and fertilizer are applied to the turf, the root structure of the turf is able to directly absorb these nutrients and thereby the growth of the root structure is stimulated, making the turf healthier.
A typical aerator includes a rotary drum having spikes or tines mounted to and extending radially from the cylindrical surface of the drum. The drum is moved across the turf and the tines tend to penetrate the turf so that the drum and tines “walk” across the turf. The aerator is usually pulled behind a tractor with the aerator rotating against the turf in response to the forward motion of the tractor.
Some of the prior art aerators have had a plurality of hollow coring tines that penetrate the turf and cut a generally cylindrical core or plug in the turf. When the coring tines are pulled away from the turf, they usually lift the plug out of the ground, leaving a residue of cores of soil on the surface of the ground. The residue of cores of soil is undesirable on lawns and on playing fields such as golf courses and baseball fields where the condition of the surface of the turf is very important to the sports person. A type of core producing aerator is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,773,486.
An improvement over the aerators that utilize coring tines is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,209,306, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein in its entirety. The tines of the aerator are solid so that no core of soil is formed, and the power take-off from the tractor is connected to the aerator so that the tines are moved in an oscillating motion so that they “wobble” as they rotate with the aerator. This wobbling movement tends to enlarge the holes in the turf that are formed by the tines, thereby enhancing the amount of aeration and the degree in which the moisture, fertilizer, etc. can penetrate the turf.
In many situations, it is desirable to simultaneously dispense seeds to the turf and simultaneously penetrate the turf with the aerator, so as to re-seed the turf. The usual method for applying seeds to the turf is to load a hopper with seeds and progressively feed the seeds from the hopper to a seeder at the exit of the hopper. The seeder may be in the form of a plurality of cylindrical wheels. The perimeter surface of each cylindrical wheel has a series of seed detents oriented circumferentially thereabout, and the seeds from the hopper fall into the detents and move with the seed feed wheels to an outlet where the seeds drop, usually through a conduit, to the ground below the apparatus.
The use of seed feed wheels in seeders is common and has been in wide use for a long time. However, when the type of seed is to be changed in the hopper, such as changing from a small seed like Centipede or Bent Grass seed or Bermuda seed to a larger seed such as Fescue seed, or vice versa, it is desirable to change the feed wheels so that the detents in the feed wheels are the right size to accommodate the seeds.
Another method to accommodate a change in seed size is to carry two seeders on one machine, one inactive while the other one operates. The different size seeds could be placed in the separate hoppers of the dual seeder. However, seeders are usually operated in environments where they dispense the same sized seeds over a long period of time, without requiring a more expensive dual hopper arrangement. Therefore, the more typical situation is to use a single hopper seeder with single sized seed feed wheels that must be changed out when the size of the seeds is changed.
Accordingly, it can be seen that it would be desirable to produce an apparatus that performs the function of accurately seeding turf and, when appropriate, being adapted for expedient exchange of seed feed wheels when the size of the seeds being dispensed is to be changed.
Another desirable aspect would be that the quick change seed feed wheel assembly be utilized with an improved turf aerator such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,209,306 that avoids depositing soil plugs on the surface of the turf and that forms the more desirable larger lateral dimensions in the openings below the surface of the turf for receiving the seeds from the seed hopper and inducing improved growth of the root structure of the ground cover. It is to these features that this invention is directed.